


Mindswap

by Manna



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:06:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manna/pseuds/Manna





	Mindswap

An accident, a mistake made in haste, that is sometimes all it takes to precipitate disaster.

As soon as I woke up, I knew something was terribly wrong. I pulled the sheets back and looked down at my body. It wasn't an entirely unfamiliar sight. I'd seen it many times before, made love to it in fact. But it was still unquestionably Avon's body and not mine. There were, after all, some fairly obvious differences.

There was no point in panicking. Assuming this wasn't a dream (and I knew that beyond any question) there was an explanation and therefore, probably, a solution. It was a physical problem, that was all. I, Cally, was intact inside. The Auronar have a very strong self of self; when you share your mind with everyone, it's a necessity.

Still, I couldn't entirely dismiss the hammering of my heart, or the fact that my hands were shaking. I held my hands up and looked at them—strong, square, familiar masculine hands—and then ran them through my thick, straight hair. Then I lay very still and closed my eyes and thought back, trying to work out what had happened.

I remembered only blurred and fragmented sounds. Tarrant's voice, "Neither of them are making any sense. Let's put them to bed. Maybe they'll be all right in the morning."

"What if we mixed the minds up? Would they survive, in the wrong body?"

A silence, then Tarrant again, frightened and hiding it with anger. "How the hell would I know, Dayna?"

Vila spoke, more openly scared and saying what everyone else was only thinking. "They _have_ to be all right; there's nothing we can do if they aren't. Ultraworld's gone."

Then the scene blanked out again until I was pulled closer to consciousness by hands lifting me up. I felt unnaturally heavy. "Dayna, can you manage Cally by yourself?"

So Dayna was lifting me? Except that Dayna's reply came from some distance away.

"No problem. She doesn't weigh much."

Tarrant and Vila had undressed me and put me to bed. I'd protested, weakly, but they hadn't understood me.

What else could I remember?

I was starting to sort through the fragmented memories of Ultraworld when I heard a frantic hammering on my door. I rose, clumsy in my unfamiliar skin, and wrapped the sheet around myself. I didn't bother to dress because I had good idea of who would be outside.

I was right, and even though I'd prepared myself it was still a shock. It was like looking into a distorting mirror. My face, with Avon's expression of horror under a desperately thin mask of composure.

We stared at each other for a long moment, then spoke together, simultaneously grasping at the first stupid thing which came to mind.

I said, "I really should do something else with my hair."

He said, "I'm a lot shorter than I thought I was."

There was another silence, then I stepped back from the doorway.

"You'd better come in. After all, it is your room."

He nodded, closing the door behind himself and looking round as if he were seeing the place for the first time. He walked across to the table, picked up a piece of circuitry and I was fascinated by every movement, by the picture it presented. It was like seeing myself in a viscast. I looked so thin.

Avon stood there, in my body, turning the circuit over and over in his hands. He didn't say anything, but I was shocked to realise I could _hear_ him. Avon's words, spoken in my own mental voice. Female voice, male inflection.

{It's all right. I know what this is. Detector shield high-energy wave damper. There's a fault in the output balance. I can remember.}

There was a fragile calm to his thoughts as he put the circuit back down on the table, very precisely.

{All right. All right. Now. Turn round and look at her again. Me. It's not so bad, not as bad as it seemed at first. It could be worse—it can always be worse. Turn and look.}

He started to turn and before he could see me, I said, "I can hear you."

He froze.

"I can hear you in my mind," I explained.

{Oh yes _now_ it's worse no don't think no...}

Pure panic drowned out his words, washing out of him in waves. I was mesmerised by how, despite it, he kept my body so still and contained.

I tried to find the words, reached back to childhood lessons.

"It's my telepathy, Avon, that's all. You can stop it, control it. It's quite easy. There is an inside and an outside. It's no different to speech—only send out the things you want to send."

He nodded jerkily, a puppet with tangled strings. Slowly, the floods of feeling ebbed, stilled. Silence returned to my mind and I had never thought I would be so glad of that.

After a moment he said, "Can you hear that?"

"No."

"Good."

But he didn't look round. Only his hands moved, palms stroking over each other quite unconsciously in a familiar gesture that was shockingly out of place.

"It was Ultraworld." He struggled to keep his delivery level, but I could hear the shaking in his voice. Hearing myself so close to panic made my heart start racing again.

"I asked Orac about it," he continued. "The Ultras put our mind prints into a database, do you remember that? Tarrant had to restore us quickly, because the brain that controlled the planet was failing. Do you remember? He didn't have time to check the tubes. That's how it happened, Cally."

I had never heard him say so much, so quickly, without listening to himself at all. He was looking down at his unfamiliar hands, as I had earlier. I spoke without really thinking.

"Tarrant is going to be terribly upset."

Avon spun round, nearly losing his balance, forgetting not to look at me. "_Tarrant_ is going to be upset? Tarrant is going to be _dead_."

And from his mind an almost wordless stream of fear. {Oh dear god look at me her how am I going to tell the others what am I going to say to them that's me and I can't I just can't...}

"You're sending again."

He turned half away and shut me out, his—my—face pale with helpless fury. I remembered his words to the psychic alien who had copied my body.

'You look so beautiful, when you're angry.'

He was right, I did. I watched my body pacing the room, twitching with suppressed rage and concentration. I felt a sudden rush of desire, the first sign that the Ultras hadn't emptied Avon's brain entirely of Avon. I was startled, then unexpectedly thrilled, by the alien reaction of my body hardening.

"Avon."

"What?" He didn't look round.

"Avon, come over here. Please."

To my surprise, he came over at once, let me hold him. Enfolding him so completely in my arms was another thrill, a guilty moment of pleasure when he was so distressed.

He spoke into my shoulder. "You're...I'm a lot stronger than you are. I'd never really realised."

His voice held a hysterical edge which frightened me.

"Yes, I know. It's very peculiar. But we'll find a way to undo it, Avon." I said his name deliberately, trying to make him see that he was still himself.

"Ultraworld is gone. There's nothing we can do."

"We'll find a way."

He clung onto me, then suddenly froze under my hands. It took me a second to realise why.

My erection was pressed against him through the thin sheet.

"Avon, I'm sorry! I'm..."

My voice died away as he looked up at me. For a long time his expression was utterly blank, then the most amazing smile broke slowly across his face. My face. Avon's smile on my face.

{Yes.}

He was sending again, but this time I thought it was deliberate. Maybe he couldn't have said it out loud. I hesitated.

"Avon, I don't think..."

{I. I want you. I still want you. Please.}

He started stripping, fumbling with unfamiliar clothes, so that in the end I had to help him. He didn't seem to mind.

It was the strangest combination of sex and masturbation.

It should have been a terribly bad idea. It should have blurred the divisions between us beyond hope. But somehow, to Avon, it didn't. Somehow it helped him redraw his boundaries. I could tell all this because he was sending again, unable to stop himself at first, perhaps not even aware he was doing it.

He touched his own body with a fierce concentration, and I had to admit that he was good at it. The speed and intensity of my new responses was exhilarating. And it was impossibly weird and exciting to touch him—myself—in return, and to know how the body I touched would react to every kiss and caress.

Everything was wrong and right and familiar and strange, all at once.

He hesitated only once, when he had kissed his way down my body, as I often did to him, and touched his lips to the very tip of my—his—penis. With a reflex that hadn't been mine I had reached down and urged him on. He flinched away.

"I, it's too...I, ah, I don't think..."

I slid my hands further down and pulled him back up the bed, rolled him over so he lay beneath me. Then it was my turn to hesitate, pull back. It felt like something irrevocable.

"Go on."

He had stilled his mental voice completely, leaving me only physical clues, but his eyes—my eyes—were bright with excitement and wanting. He was smiling the out-of-place Avon smile with my lips.

"Go on." He slid further beneath me, making me aware of how slender and fragile my body seemed from outside. I felt a sudden, irrational fear that I would hurt him.

He pulled my head down and kissed me impatiently. "Go _on_."

Would I have done it if I'd realised what he had begun to plan even then, if perhaps only unconsciously? Probably. I couldn't resist him.

Who hasn't wanted to know what their lover feels when they're making love?

~~~

Afterwards, I rolled over and put my hand on Avon's chest and touched my own breasts there. It felt so strange I had to fight the urge to giggle. He was silent again, voice and mind, and I was worried for him. I didn't dare lift my head to look at his face.

Suddenly, he spoke, his voice resonating through my hand.

"Cally?"

"Yes?"

"Let's not tell them."

"What?"

"Let's not tell them what's happened."

"What? No!" A pause while I considered the idea. "Why?"

"If we can find a way to reverse it, they need never know."

"That's not the reason." I was a little surprised by my own certainty, because before I'd been sure my intuition had come solely from my telepathy.

"No...no, it isn't."

"What then?"

"I'm not sure but...I feel it would be better for a while. Orac may be able to come up with a solution, given time."

"All right, if you like. Vila would be utterly unbearable, anyway."

"Good. I'll tell Orac to keep silent."

So the decision had been made.

~~~

The strangest part was that I didn't miss my telepathy at all, because now I could receive rather than send. It was what I had needed ever since I left Auron. And he spoke to me a lot. He broadcast his words and ideas to me, and I acted out my part. At first it was silly and exciting, hiding everything from the others.

His part was harder in a way, because I could send him no mental cues. However, he did well enough. He seemed to find a playful side in me that the others recognised even though I did not. When Vila spoke to me about Cally chasing him from the flight deck, he didn't seem to think it odd, only amusing.

There were mistakes, lapses from character which fortunately went unnoticed. They tended to happen in moments of crisis, when everyone was focused on the danger.

Over Sardos, Dayna didn't notice when I displayed an unusual knowledge of the teleporter and fortunately she didn't overhear Avon's sudden concern for Vila, or my chilly response. After that we were more careful to speak in character when there was a chance of any the others walking in.

On the whole, for those months at least, I enjoyed being Avon. It was fun to say something, even something quite outrageous, and feel the hesitation in the others. Often the arguments would still come but there was always the pause first, the consideration. Is it worth resisting him over this? It was a kind of power I had never had before, or ever consciously wanted, but I relished it.

We had only one real argument, after we left the Teal/Vandor combat grounds. When we were safely underway, he took me to his cabin. Once inside he turned on me, tense and furious.

"You were supposed to _kill_ Servalan, not kiss her."

"Avon, that was impossible. It was just as you told Dayna—we couldn't risk breaching the conventions."

"I told you nothing of the sort, Cally. _You_ told _me_."

"It was your idea. It would have meant war, Avon, you know that. Teal and Vandor would have been devastated."

"My heart bleeds for them."

"Would it really have been worth it? Just to kill Servalan?"

"No...no, I suppose not, Av...Cally. _Cally_."

He sat down suddenly on the bed, slumped and miserable. I had never realised how much of Avon's self-image was bound up in his body. A human thing, I suppose. I wondered then if I would end up like that, unable to separate mind and flesh.

I sat down beside him, put my strong arms round his narrow shoulders and hugged him.

"It's going to be all right, Avon."

{No, it isn't.}

~~~

I thought after that he would ask me to tell the others, or perhaps simply tell them himself since the deception had been his idea, but he didn't. Despite the occasional bouts of doubt and anger, he was enjoying the experience as much as I was.

I had never realised before quite how much Avon disliked and resented the burden of leadership. Looking back to the time Blake had led us, I saw that Avon had always wanted the control without the responsibility, and now he had it. He could run the ship through me, whilst he sat in the background, without the burden of the crews' expectations directed at him. That compensated for the fear I knew he sometimes felt when he awoke in the night and couldn't remember quite who he was.

When that happened, I was always there to remind him. He would reach out, kiss me, run his hands over me to map out every inch of skin, and make love to me or maybe, more accurately, to himself. I couldn't tell for sure, because he had become much better at controlling his thoughts.

An equilibrium, of a kind, was achieved. At least until Terminal.

~~~

The arguments about the messages from Blake were different to the quarrel over the kiss with Servalan. Avon was simply implacable. We were going, no question about it. I tried to resist but he harried me unmercifully—bullying, calculating, using my telepathy against me in ways I never could have done to him.

I stood toe to toe with Tarrant on the flight deck of Liberator and Avon practically forced the threats through my lips. As I walked off the flight deck, I heard his voice, wondering and triumphant.

'He meant it. He was going to kill you.'

I thought about not cooperating, about trying to tell the others, about refusing to do down to the planet. But I knew it wouldn't make any difference. He would find a way to go. Besides, it might be worth it in the end. If Blake were there perhaps Avon could be persuaded to return control of the Liberator to him, to concentrate instead on finding a way to undo what had been done on Ultraworld.

Knowing that I wouldn't be going down to Terminal alone also gave me a certain, unwarranted, feeling of security. That Avon himself would follow me was part of my conditions for going at all, and I knew the others wouldn't let him—Cally—go alone. I recorded the message which explained everything (really everything, although Avon didn't know that) and teleported down.

It was a trap, and I had always known it would be. I broke my character yet again to warn Vila and the others to flee. Hoping against hope that noone had yet followed me down, or that they could be teleported to safety.

A disaster. I rebelled too late.

Perhaps, in the end, I went because I loved him. It was only later, much later, that I realised _why_ Avon so desperately wanted to meet Blake again.

~~~

I heard his last thought, broadcast across the planet, amplified by pain and fear.

{Blake!}

The last words I ever heard from another mind.

That was the moment when I most nearly lost control, although I doubted Dayna had an inkling of suspicion. I was amazed at how cold, how cool I could be when underneath I was screaming for him with my useless, silent human brain. We went back to the underground base and I climbed down the ladder, shrugging off Dayna's protests, praying that I had been wrong.

He was dead.

I was dead.

I stood for a long time, holding the silent Orac for comfort, looking down at the broken wreck of my body, and I wept for both of us. I had loved him, more than I had been able to tell him or make him understand, and he was gone. There was no possibility now that I would ever be entirely myself again. I would never look into his eyes and see him looking back.

Even then, in the depths of my grief, the cry stung my irrationally.

'Blake!'

In extremis, he had called for Blake.

~~~

And then, I went on. Many times I thought about telling the others. But they had enough doubts about Avon's mental state without springing this on them.

The pretense wasn't easy. Avon had always been a study in contrasts, his actions and his words often transparently, even endearingly, at odds. I found it hard to balance my portrayal without the touch of his mind to guide me. Often I heard myself turning into an ugly parody of Avon—all his darkness and temper and casual cruelties, without the moments of humour and affection which had made him into a whole person. I set up traps and hid information from the others. Was it because it was what he would have done, or what I drew from my now sometimes caricatured image of him?

There were some changes, though. Considering the difficulties, I'm quite proud of the way I managed things. Simply being Avon was tricky enough, but I did better than that—I tried to take the fight to the Federation. I am the revolutionary, after all.

If things did, in the end, go badly, perhaps I inherited Avon's luck along with some of his mind.

I found out, after Terminal, that I did have a lot of his emotions and I uncovered more as I went along. There were memories, too, broken pieces which fitted together over time until I came to know him better than I ever had while he lived.

At first I was glad of them. It was a comfort to have parts of him I could carry with me, something to cushion the shock of his death—my death—and the final loss of telepathic contact. But as time passed, the thoughts became an intolerable burden. I could no longer always separate them from my own.

And some of them were things I never wanted to know. I was prepared for Anna, of course. If I didn't welcome the knowledge that Avon never loved me, Cally, as much as he had loved Anna, well, at least I had expected it. It hurt, but it was part of what I had loved in him to begin with. Devotion beyond death.

Blake I hadn't expected. Once again, looking back I can see the signs. I ought to feel sorry for Avon, for his passion so hopelessly directed towards someone who didn't and couldn't return his feelings. At the same time, the certain knowledge of Avon's motives for going to Terminal revolted me.

I had not even been his second best. I was third best, behind a lying Federation agent and a man who would have recoiled if Avon had ever tried to touch him without the excuse of clear and present danger.

Avon had planned to use my body to change that, to gift himself to Blake in a more acceptable wrapping. Had he ever followed the idea to its limit? Had Avon let himself know that I would never have allowed it to happen and therefore I would have had to die on Terminal? It was one thing I didn't know for sure, but still the possibility tormented me.

But over time the pain transmuted into resentment, almost into hatred, directed inexplicably towards Blake. It disturbed me, because I had never hated Blake before and I didn't want to. It was another of Avon's processes, his way of dealing with rejection and betrayal, real or perceived.

It made perfect sense, in a way. The synapses in Avon's brain had been built out of his memories and experiences. The Ultras' technology had altered them to contain me, but the underlying structure was Avon's. It was not unpredictable that over time he would come to reassert himself.

That rationality, that cool analysis of my fracturing mind, that was Avon too.

~~~

My people had a saying: as right as two become one. We exalted a full union of minds, rare and precious. This is nothing like that.

It came to a head, finally, over Malodaar. I heard Orac's words, his dispassionate delivery of requested information.

'Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon.'

I fought for a mere couple of seconds before Avon's indomitable will to survive tore through my resistance as if it were cobwebs. Then I picked up the gun, walked out of the room, icy cold and focused.

I knew utterly and without doubt that I was willing to do it. All I could manage to do was put the lie into my voice, praying that Vila would be warned—except for that I was a helpless prisoner in my own body.

_His_ body.

Is that how he feels, all the time? Is Avon, entire and whole, locked away inside me somewhere? It is an appealing idea. If he was there I could perhaps talk to him, reason with him. But I know it isn't true. There is only a poorly differentiated mass of fears and desires and memories, without conscious direction, spreading through my mind.

A cancer, eating away at my sense of self.

~~~

Even after Malodaar I believed—I couldn't allow myself not to believe—that I could still become myself again. All I needed was time and space to rest and disentangle my own mind. However, with the pressures of the fight against the Federation, that was exactly what I didn't have. There was one obvious possibility, given to me by Orac with surprising ease, but I shied away from it. Instead I pinned my hopes on the alliance with Zukan. It failed me—Avon's bad luck again.

Then the base was compromised and there were no other options left. I had the key to unlock my prison, if I could bring myself to turn it. I had Blake's location. I resolved to swallow down my unreasoning anger and find him, to let my responsibilities pass on to someone else. He can have Orac, the Stardrive, the teleport and the rest of the damned crew if he wants them.

I need to be alone, and the irony does not escape me. I need to take myself away from the reminders and the constant fight for survival which only strengthens Avon while it weakens me.

I know that slowly, inexorable, I am losing the battle to stay sane. Or perhaps I have already lost it, and myself with it.

I fear disaster, again, on this second expedition to find Blake. There is no logical reason to expect a trap, as there was on Terminal, but the air on Scorpio tastes bad, the atmosphere tained with a premonition of failure and worse. In my mind he mocks me for my irrationality.

I need to find Blake soon, and I feel the crippled remnant of Avon within my urging my towards the meeting. I want to see Blake again, with a constant, sick yearning which isn't mine at all and which makes me want to scream, hit out, deny the aching desire. I feel the truth of Blake's words.

'You really do hate me, don't you?'

Yes, I do. Servalan laid the explosives at Terminal, but it was Blake who stopped Avon from loving me. Who filled my mind with someone I loved who loves another. And while I dimly know that Blake is not to blame, I stand on the shore and cannot hold back the rising tide of betrayal and loss and pain and devotion twisted into hatred.

But still, no matter now. We will find him, together.

~~~

A doubt, a fear, a misunderstanding, that is sometimes all it takes to provide an excuse, to precipitate a disaster.

Hatreds, fears and passions meet and meld, lift the gun, pull the trigger. Blood flows and we stand there, the two of us, locked in our invisible battle as the rest of our world dies around us.

A last thought of melded self. 'Is this what we intended all along?'

It shouldn't end this way. But end it does, with my smile on his lips.


End file.
